People are so fucking dumb. Whenever I read the comments on a shark-related news story (and I read a lot of them), there tend to be two kinds: idiots who literally, in their own words, "wish all sharks would disappear" or "think we should kill all of them", and idiots who spew out a great deal of misspelled words about how the other idiots are unworthy of life and "i thnk sarks are beutiful and u dont know about them maybe u shuld lern smthing lol!!!!" I despise all these people. The first group clearly doesn't understand how nature works and can't wrap their minds around the idea that sharks are simply powerful predators, like lions or bears. As for the second group, well, a nurse shark ineffectually mashing the keyboard with a pectoral fin could probably produce a better defense of itself.
There's also the ones related to the ever-contentious shark-fishing tournaments. In this case, both sides have a point, albeit poorly articulated in most cases. The argument basically goes something like this:
Tree-hugger: u tortyr sharks it has to stop when will ppl love the world lol
Redneck: killing sharks is awesom lol ur stupid
Better-educated Redneck: Youre argument is mis-understood becaus its not the anglers who are the reason sharks are in danger its the commercial trawlers maybe you tree-hugging hippies should be going after them insted of ppl who understand them better than you and want to show there kids live sharks dead and up close so they can learn about them
Tree-hugger: Shut up ur all redneks w/o any educashun sharks shud eat all ur children imo lol
Okay, I personally support catch-and-release tournaments and am against killing tournaments. While it is true that it's commercial fisheries, not sportsmen, who are responsible for the massive decline in shark stocks worldwide, that doesn't mean the sportsmen should be killing more, even only a few more, for their own macho enjoyment. The reason I support catch-and-release, while it is probably stressful for the animals, is because the sharks are usually tagged in this sort of competition, and any possibility that we can protect these creatures hinges on our knowledge of them, of which we have comparatively none.
Most of all, it is my fervent hope that some idiots will bother to learn that sharks are non-man-eating (generally), beautiful, powerful, vulnerable creatures doing their own thing in their own environment, and that other idiots will stop being so elitist, or at least learn how to spell. The need of sharks is too urgent for all this hen-pecking.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Long-Winded Rant
This should be fun. Blogs are for splattering your deepest, darkest opinions all over, so let's paste in a rant I wrote a while ago. There is no structure and no paragraphs, only indignation. Let's see what happens.
It's all been asked before. But there is still no satisfactory answer. Why? Why is their war? Famine, death and disease are different. They are natural. War is not--although it can be said that some animals, such as ants, have war. True, war is a manifestation of natural impulses. But, especially on the scale it exists today, there is not much natural about it. The solution is simple: we all have to get along. Why is it so difficult to produce this simple solution? Maybe the same reason it's so difficult for me to put down in words the stories that are so clearly etched in my imagination. Theorizing is easy, implementation difficult. It's like an unseen force. It's like that thing that happens when you try to press two magnets together at the wrong ends. Something that can't be defined. Maybe when we ask "why," we are really asking: "what is this thing that stands in the way of us doing what we know to be right and good?" Again, as happens so often when I get philosophical, I see why religion exists. Religion provides the unseen force with identity. Satan or some other demon holds us all back from attaining what we know we need. I would like to believe that, but I can't. I know (or I think, rather) that it is human limitation. It is my own mind keeping me from writing, and our collective minds keeping us from getting along. Why can so few other people grant any time to seeing things from others' points of view? Or to feeling what other people feel? When you think of another person as yourself, it becomes easy, even essential, not to hate them. Could this be the instinct for self-preservation? If that was all we were running on, why would empathy be an admirable trait? It would be an annoyance, preventing you from doing things that must be done for your own survival. I understand conservatives, or at least I think I do. I can also see why they feel the way they feel. But I know they are wrong. History shows that they have always been wrong. They can't see it. How could they? To realize, consciously, that your viewpoint, philosophy on life, and everything you believe in is wrong (or rather, too simple) would be destructive, devastating, to one's psyche. Why should we expect them to admit that? It would be death. How can we change them? Many, we can't. They'll die, their children will feel differently, and things will change despite their best efforts. But conservativism will never go away. Some things will simply be replaced with new things to feel conservative about. The old "earth is flat" argument and all that. Flat-earthers would never have dreamed about conflict over evolution, but it is their spiritual successors that carry on that debate. In their own way, conservatives are very modern. I also have no doubt that they are eternal. To be conservative is to be someone resisting change. They are frightened people. The rest of us are frightened too, of course, but unlike us they have found a symbolic solution to that fear: the familiar past. Let us not forget that we are all, in some ways, conservative. Most of us would think it unethical, or at the very least creepy, to remove the brain of a newborn and replace it with a computer that programmed in its designated societal role. But in a few centuries, perhaps people that believe that would be the conservatives, and the ones advocating it the progressives. Is there no limit to human morality and immorality? It seems to me like a continuum, with the progressives striving forward and the conservatives backward, onwards and onwards through time, with the old progressive opinion being the new conservative opinion. Where, in this, is real morality? Does such a thing exist? In the universe, or at least on Earth, is there a real "right" or "wrong?" And if morality does not exist, what does that mean? If it doesn't than everything almost everyone believes is wrong, because most of us possess a sense of morality. If there is no morality, it is money and power that are right. The capitalist, the individualist, the selfish one. If there is no morality, the only people who are right are the ones whose only function in life is to look out for themselves. Yet I feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with this way of thinking. I don't know, I feel. To look out for themselves is something animals do. Are humans actually greater than animals? I don't know about greater, but I think that humans are more than animals. The way we strive for knowledge, spirituality, fulfillment beyond our material needs is distinctly beyond the animal. But is it better? Who knows? We could use all our knowledge to destroy the planet. Yet we are also a fundamentally optimistic race. All of our science fiction depicts this. Even our post-apocalyptic scenarios assume that we as a race somehow survive the apocalypse. We believe we will always be present. But as C. S. Lewis has pointed out in Out of the Silent Planet, we have no way of knowing that our future selves will be "us." In fact, with the advent of genetic modification, it is likely that they won't be. Even with natural evolution, they wouldn't be. Our descendants will no more be "us" than we are the dinosaurs. We will not survive. What is left? I understand religion.
It's all been asked before. But there is still no satisfactory answer. Why? Why is their war? Famine, death and disease are different. They are natural. War is not--although it can be said that some animals, such as ants, have war. True, war is a manifestation of natural impulses. But, especially on the scale it exists today, there is not much natural about it. The solution is simple: we all have to get along. Why is it so difficult to produce this simple solution? Maybe the same reason it's so difficult for me to put down in words the stories that are so clearly etched in my imagination. Theorizing is easy, implementation difficult. It's like an unseen force. It's like that thing that happens when you try to press two magnets together at the wrong ends. Something that can't be defined. Maybe when we ask "why," we are really asking: "what is this thing that stands in the way of us doing what we know to be right and good?" Again, as happens so often when I get philosophical, I see why religion exists. Religion provides the unseen force with identity. Satan or some other demon holds us all back from attaining what we know we need. I would like to believe that, but I can't. I know (or I think, rather) that it is human limitation. It is my own mind keeping me from writing, and our collective minds keeping us from getting along. Why can so few other people grant any time to seeing things from others' points of view? Or to feeling what other people feel? When you think of another person as yourself, it becomes easy, even essential, not to hate them. Could this be the instinct for self-preservation? If that was all we were running on, why would empathy be an admirable trait? It would be an annoyance, preventing you from doing things that must be done for your own survival. I understand conservatives, or at least I think I do. I can also see why they feel the way they feel. But I know they are wrong. History shows that they have always been wrong. They can't see it. How could they? To realize, consciously, that your viewpoint, philosophy on life, and everything you believe in is wrong (or rather, too simple) would be destructive, devastating, to one's psyche. Why should we expect them to admit that? It would be death. How can we change them? Many, we can't. They'll die, their children will feel differently, and things will change despite their best efforts. But conservativism will never go away. Some things will simply be replaced with new things to feel conservative about. The old "earth is flat" argument and all that. Flat-earthers would never have dreamed about conflict over evolution, but it is their spiritual successors that carry on that debate. In their own way, conservatives are very modern. I also have no doubt that they are eternal. To be conservative is to be someone resisting change. They are frightened people. The rest of us are frightened too, of course, but unlike us they have found a symbolic solution to that fear: the familiar past. Let us not forget that we are all, in some ways, conservative. Most of us would think it unethical, or at the very least creepy, to remove the brain of a newborn and replace it with a computer that programmed in its designated societal role. But in a few centuries, perhaps people that believe that would be the conservatives, and the ones advocating it the progressives. Is there no limit to human morality and immorality? It seems to me like a continuum, with the progressives striving forward and the conservatives backward, onwards and onwards through time, with the old progressive opinion being the new conservative opinion. Where, in this, is real morality? Does such a thing exist? In the universe, or at least on Earth, is there a real "right" or "wrong?" And if morality does not exist, what does that mean? If it doesn't than everything almost everyone believes is wrong, because most of us possess a sense of morality. If there is no morality, it is money and power that are right. The capitalist, the individualist, the selfish one. If there is no morality, the only people who are right are the ones whose only function in life is to look out for themselves. Yet I feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with this way of thinking. I don't know, I feel. To look out for themselves is something animals do. Are humans actually greater than animals? I don't know about greater, but I think that humans are more than animals. The way we strive for knowledge, spirituality, fulfillment beyond our material needs is distinctly beyond the animal. But is it better? Who knows? We could use all our knowledge to destroy the planet. Yet we are also a fundamentally optimistic race. All of our science fiction depicts this. Even our post-apocalyptic scenarios assume that we as a race somehow survive the apocalypse. We believe we will always be present. But as C. S. Lewis has pointed out in Out of the Silent Planet, we have no way of knowing that our future selves will be "us." In fact, with the advent of genetic modification, it is likely that they won't be. Even with natural evolution, they wouldn't be. Our descendants will no more be "us" than we are the dinosaurs. We will not survive. What is left? I understand religion.
Is this what fantasy has come to?
I have been playing on and off with the idea of starting a blog, but watching Stardust cinched it. I will not stand for my favorite genre being exploited so.
Mind you, Stardust is not a horrible movie. It's no Eragon or Dungeons & Dragons. But it is mediocre, and it's this reckless mediocrity that crushes my soul. You see, fantasy these days seems to inevitably fall into two categories: making a sad attempt at originality or riding the coattails of Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. The former is sad precisely because it relies on the latter more than it knows. Gone are the days of Conan the Barbarian and The Princess Bride; these are now relegated to the same stagnant "inspirational" pool as the great British epics (well, not Conan--the gutless worms of Hollywood possess not the courage). Stardust chose The Princess Bride to be its muse, despite having a perfectly good Neil Gaiman story that it mostly ignored in the pursuit of its own goals. Being unable to lie, I will not pretend to have read that story myself, but the film had the stink of Hollywood "adaptation" all over it, and my investigations on the Internet confirmed that the mood of the book and all but mere traces of its originality were missed in the movie.
However, I am a paladin, not a professional film reviewer. I am here to preach. I see this film and others like it, and I fear for fantasy. This genre, which along with sci-fi holds the greatest potential for mold-breaking, is being relegated to a standard. The beauty of fantasy is the freedom it grants to the storyteller, who can use metaphor to send messages with the ability to pierce to the heart of the human experience. Fantasy is nothing if not pure, unadulterated metaphor. Why would we be interested in looking at a world completely unlike our own unless it meant something to us, in the same way as a dream or myth? Few of us have dreams that make much sense, and most are inconsequential, but we all have had a handful of dreams that, while bizarre like the rest, meant a great deal to us. You all know the ones I'm talking about. The ones that cause you to wake up thinking hard about your life and your situation, but are still too weird to explain easily. You just know, without quantification, that they were meaningful. Ideally, fantasy should reflect a similar feeling. Fantasy, like the myths and fairy tales that spawned it, is a dream of society. A genre that ought to be unfettered by the banality of real life, that has the ultimate freedom to say whatever it wishes, should never become so typecast as it has now. I want to see movies that no longer throw away the magic of a fantastical story for a few pop-culture ribs and video games that can pull off a fantasy world without putting orcs or elves in it. I want to see exemplary acting, intelligent dialogue, exciting fight scenes and lots, lots more grubby peasants. Give us a different reality, not our own force-fed through a glitter machine. And make that new reality say the things about our real world that we could never say except in dreams.
Mind you, Stardust is not a horrible movie. It's no Eragon or Dungeons & Dragons. But it is mediocre, and it's this reckless mediocrity that crushes my soul. You see, fantasy these days seems to inevitably fall into two categories: making a sad attempt at originality or riding the coattails of Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. The former is sad precisely because it relies on the latter more than it knows. Gone are the days of Conan the Barbarian and The Princess Bride; these are now relegated to the same stagnant "inspirational" pool as the great British epics (well, not Conan--the gutless worms of Hollywood possess not the courage). Stardust chose The Princess Bride to be its muse, despite having a perfectly good Neil Gaiman story that it mostly ignored in the pursuit of its own goals. Being unable to lie, I will not pretend to have read that story myself, but the film had the stink of Hollywood "adaptation" all over it, and my investigations on the Internet confirmed that the mood of the book and all but mere traces of its originality were missed in the movie.
However, I am a paladin, not a professional film reviewer. I am here to preach. I see this film and others like it, and I fear for fantasy. This genre, which along with sci-fi holds the greatest potential for mold-breaking, is being relegated to a standard. The beauty of fantasy is the freedom it grants to the storyteller, who can use metaphor to send messages with the ability to pierce to the heart of the human experience. Fantasy is nothing if not pure, unadulterated metaphor. Why would we be interested in looking at a world completely unlike our own unless it meant something to us, in the same way as a dream or myth? Few of us have dreams that make much sense, and most are inconsequential, but we all have had a handful of dreams that, while bizarre like the rest, meant a great deal to us. You all know the ones I'm talking about. The ones that cause you to wake up thinking hard about your life and your situation, but are still too weird to explain easily. You just know, without quantification, that they were meaningful. Ideally, fantasy should reflect a similar feeling. Fantasy, like the myths and fairy tales that spawned it, is a dream of society. A genre that ought to be unfettered by the banality of real life, that has the ultimate freedom to say whatever it wishes, should never become so typecast as it has now. I want to see movies that no longer throw away the magic of a fantastical story for a few pop-culture ribs and video games that can pull off a fantasy world without putting orcs or elves in it. I want to see exemplary acting, intelligent dialogue, exciting fight scenes and lots, lots more grubby peasants. Give us a different reality, not our own force-fed through a glitter machine. And make that new reality say the things about our real world that we could never say except in dreams.
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